Sweetness_ The Enigmatic Life of Walter Payton - Jeff Pearlman [107]
“He was so much bigger than the team or the city of Buffalo,” said Tom Donchez, a running back drafted in the fourth round by the Bills in 1975. “Buffalo was a whistle stop for him—a place to pick up a check. O. J. would hold court and have an expert opinion on anything, merely because he was O. J. That doesn’t mean he wasn’t liked by teammates, because he was. He was funny and engaging. But I think you took him with a grain of salt.”
Simpson reveled in his place atop the NFL. With Jim Brown a decade retired and Gale Sayers five years gone, he reigned as the undisputable king of backs. It was with a skeptical eye and great cynicism, therefore, that Simpson began hearing about the kid from Jackson State trespassing on his terrain. When Sports Illustrated described Payton exploding “from his set like a grenade from an M79 launcher,” Simpson dismissed the praise as excessive hyperbole. When O’Connor, Payton’s backfield coach, said of his star, “God said he wanted a halfback, and he made Walter,” Simpson chuckled. He never publicly mocked or questioned Payton, but within the sanctity of the Bills’ locker room, Simpson scoffed. Hot backs came, hot backs went. Payton wouldn’t last for long.
Just one problem: In the midst of one of his best seasons, Simpson couldn’t shake free of Payton in the race for the NFL rushing title. As the Bills (who would finish 2-12) and the Bears (who would finish 7-7) slogged through forgettable campaigns, their featured stars went back and forth atop the leaderboard. Through the first six games, Payton held a seemingly insurmountable advantage—694 yards to 376 yards. Then Simpson went on a roll—tearing up the Jets and Patriots for a combined 276 yards in weeks seven and eight, and torching the hapless Lions for an NFL-record 273 yards in week twelve. Payton lost the rushing lead to Simpson on Thanksgiving Day, but regained it a week later with 110 yards against the Packers. On December 6, the second-to-last week of the regular season, he carved up the first-year Seahawks for a career-best 183 yards. It was his seventh hundred-yard game, a new team record, and though the contest was played in Seattle’s Kingdome, a nation was captivated.
Early in the game, a message scrawled across the video board informed the crowd that Simpson had just rushed for a seventy-five-yard touchdown against Miami. Seattle’s 60,510 fans cheered wildly. At that point, Payton had gained a mere nine yards on five carries, and the Seahawk defense, featuring ex-Bear Richard Harris, was playing with uncharacteristic ferocity. Pride mattered to Seattle coach Jack Patera, and the last thing he wanted was for his club to offer an opposing player easy access to a rushing title.
Yet Payton had pride, too. Led by the loquacious Harris, Seattle’s defensive players spent much of the first quarter barking inanities—“Not today! Not on our turf!”—that only served the infuriate Payton.
“You didn’t want to motivate Walter,” said Harper. “He fed off of that stuff.”
By the time the half ended, Payton had run for 114 yards, but he was hurting. Spasms in his diaphragm were making it difficult to breathe, and a doctor and trainer helped him into the locker room. As the second half began, Payton was nowhere to be found. With the video board continuing to display Simpson’s yardage (he gained 203 against Miami), however, Payton somehow regained his breath. Though the game was well in hand (the Bears won, 34–7), he carried nine times in the fourth quarter. Three runs nullified by penalties would have given him 227. Afterward, Pardee felt no need to hide the Bears’s motives. “We weren’t going to risk anything,” he said. “But the line wants Walter to win the rushing title.”
Entering the final week of the regular season, the NFL